# regards art direction

A page made by a model usually looks like the average of every page the model has seen: a centred
headline over three lines, a little label above it, a row of icon cards, a soft gradient, a few thin
rules and a monospace caption. Nothing in it is wrong and nothing in it was decided.

This skill replaces those defaults with decisions, in four ways:

1. **Real references decide the direction.** Asked to invent a look, a model returns the category
   default. A fixed deck of directions only moves that default somewhere else: every project that
   draws the same card gets the same page. Here the agent searches regards.design, a hand-picked
   index of real website sections read by how they look, for this brief only. It looks at the pixels,
   keeps five to eight sections, names the one thing it takes from each, and derives the direction
   from what it kept.
2. **The idea comes from the subject.** What separates the best sites from the forgettable ones is a
   concept taken from the thing itself, not the styling. References feed the idea; they never replace it.
3. **A house style with no ornaments,** measured in a real browser by `scripts/inspect.mjs`, so the
   rules are checked rather than hoped for. A reference you studied can earn an exception; habit cannot.
4. **You look at what you made.** Screenshots at three widths, a juror's rubric, the references side by
   side, fix, look again.

One warning learned in testing. Taking the ornaments away is only half the job; a page that has lost its
labels, rules and cards and gained nothing in their place reads as thin. The other half is substance:
type set larger, whole fields of colour, real pictures of this subject's world (found or drawn), and
every section carrying its full content. Do not trade it for restraint.

In the commands below `<skill>` is this skill's folder. Run them from the project's root, so the
working files land in `.taste-skill/` there (the folder name is kept from tasteskill so its scripts work
unchanged). The scripts need Node 22+ and an installed Chrome, Edge or Chromium, and install nothing.
`assets.mjs` also needs network access; it uses no API keys.

**Before anything, check for the regards tools** (`search_sections`, `view_section`, `get_section`,
`page_sections`, `similar_sections`; your client may prefix them with the server's name). If they are
missing, tell the user once how to connect them:

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http regards https://mcp.regards.design/mcp
```

Then carry on with the fallback in step 3 and say so in the report. If your client reads MCP resources,
read `skill://regards-design/SKILL.md` before the first search.

## The run

Do these in order. Steps 1 to 5 decide whether the page is any good.

### 1. Read the brief and the project

Find out what is real: the subject, the audience, the one thing the page must get someone to do, the
stack, any existing brand (colours, fonts, logo), and above all **what imagery truly exists**: the
project's own photographs or product shots, a real interface that can be shown, an image generation
tool you can call, or nothing. Do not plan around pictures you do not have. Nothing of its own is
rarely nothing at all: the subject's city, street, materials and history are in open archives and
museums, free to use with a credit (step 6, `scripts/assets.mjs`).

If the request is vague, decide and state your reading in one line instead of asking. Ask only when a
missing fact blocks the work (for example, no product name).

Then **inventory the subject** in your notes: eight to twelve things that belong to this client and to
no competitor. Look for its name and what the name means; its address, door number, street and
neighbourhood, and what that place looks like (its tiles, signs, paint colours, typefaces on its shop
fronts, its light, its weather); the numbers in the brief (seats, rooms, minutes to the sea, the
price, the year); the constraint it lives with (only one batch a month, closed in winter, by
appointment); its materials and colours; its rituals and hours (the oven lit at five, the ferry at
seven); the printed things of its world (a timetable, a label, a ticket, a sign). This list is where
the idea comes from in step 4, where your searches come from in step 3, and where your picture queries
come from in step 6.

### 2. Write the argument

Before any design, list the page as claims with their proof, one line per section, the way
`references/copy.md` §1 shows. The claims decide which sections exist and in what order. Delete any
section that has no claim. This is how you avoid the stock sequence of hero, logos, three features,
testimonial, pricing, call to action. The argument is also your list of component searches in step 3.

### 3. Research the direction on regards

This step replaces dealing a direction from a fixed library. `references/regards.md` has the search
recipes, good and bad specimen notes, and the mutation moves. The short form:

**Searc

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